Change Detection Performance Under Divided Attention with Dynamic Driving Scenarios

This study investigated the effect of cognitive load on the relationshipbetween confidence in detecting changes and actual change detectionperformance. Two experiments simulated glancing away from the roadway byperiodically blanking the driver’s view for one second. Experiments wereconducted in a driving simulator where participants were asked to detect changesin the location and appearance of other vehicles while driving on a multi-lanesuburban roadway. In addition, cognitive load was imposed using messages thatparticipants were asked to listen to and answer questions about. Participants’sensitivity (d’) to vehicle changes was calculated and compared with subjectiveratings of confidence in detecting those changes. Results indicated a positiverelationship between d’ and confidence, suggesting that participants were aware ofthe factors that influenced their change-detection performance. However, thestrength of the relationship was situation-dependent. The strength of therelationship decreased when the detection task was more difficult and in thepresence of cognitive load

The Effect of Voice Interactions on Drivers’ Guidance of Attention

The objective of the current study was to assess the effect of voice interactions with an in-vehicle system on drivers’ guidance of attention. Our approach was to examine the effect of voice interactions on endogenous control of attention using a modified Posner cue-target paradigm. Consistent with the bottleneck hypothesis, dual-task slowing was observed when drivers responded to an auditory task and to a pedestrian detection task concurrently. This interference contributed to disrupted attention allocation, especially when drivers could not rely on their endogenous control of attention

Forecasting stock market volatility on Bursa Malaysia Plantation Index

This research applies the Bursa Malaysia Plantation Index to examine the most suitable forecasting model. The Plantation Index is studied because Malaysia is the world second largest in oil palm producer. Additionally, volatile crude palm oil price has resulted in the Plantation Index becoming more volatile as earnings of plantation companies depend heavily on crude palm oil prices. The forecasting techniques applied were random walk, moving average, simple regression and historical mean. The error in forecasting was measured by symmetric and asymmetric error statistics. The most suitable volatility forecasting technique for Bursa Malaysia Plantation Index was simple regression technique. The findings to a very large extent indicate that although there are different sophisticated forecasting technique, investor, managers and regulators could employ the less costly simple regression method to forecast oil palm related stocks and make their wise decision in investment, management and regulation in oil palm industry

Phosphorylation of nucleophosmin at threonine 234/237 is associated with HCC metastasis

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is frequently complicated by the occurrence of intrahepatic and extrahepatic metastases, leading to poor prognosis. To improve the prognosis for HCC patients, there is an urgent need to understand the molecular mechanisms of metastasis in HCC. Since protein Serine/Threonine phosphorylation emerges to be an important posttranslational modification critical in signaling process associated with cell proliferation, survival and metastasis, we employed a pair of primary tumor-derived and corresponding lung-metastatic counterparts (PLC/PRF/5-PT and PLC/PRF/5-LM) and aimed to identify these changes using CelluSpot Serine/Threonine kinase peptide array. Upon analysis, we found phosphorylated level of nucleophosmin (NPM) at Threonine 234/237 (p-NPM-Thr234/237) had remarkably high level in metastatic HCC cells (PLC-LM) than the corresponding primary HCC cell line (PLC-PT). Similar observation was observed in another match primary and their metastatic counterparts (MHCC-97L and MHCC-97H). By immunohistochemical staining, p-NPM-Thr234/237 was consistently found to be preferentially expressed in metastatic HCCs when compared with primary HCC in 28 HCC cases (p < 0.0001). By overexpressing Flag-tagged NPM and its phosphorylation site mutant (Thr234/237A) into low p-NPM-Thr234/237 expressing cells (Hep3B and Huh7) using a lentiviral based approach, we demonstrated that p-NPM-Thr234/237 is critical in invasion and migration of HCC cells, and this effect was mediated by cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (CDK1). Wild-type NPM was found to physically interact with a metastatic gene, ROCK2, and defective in Thr234/237 phosphorylation decreased its binding affinity, resulting in decrease in ROCK2 mediated signaling pathway. Identification of CDK1/p-NPM/ROCK2 signaling pathway provides a novel target for molecular therapy against HCC metastasis.published_or_final_versio

Work design improvement at Miroad Rubber Industries Sdn. Bhd.

Erul Food Industries known as Salaiport Industry is a family-owned company and was established on July 2017. Salaiport Industry apparently moved to a new place at Pedas, Negeri Sembilan. Previously, Salaiport Industry operated in-house located at Pagoh, Johor. This small company major business is producing frozen smoked beef, smoked quail, smoke catfish and smoked duck. The main frozen product is smoked beef. The frozen smoked meat produced by Salaiport Industry is depending on customer demands. Usually the company produce 40 kg to 60 kg a day and operated between for four days until five days. Therefore, the company produce approximately around 80 kg to 120 kg per week. The company usually take 2 days for 1 complete cycle for the production as the first day the company will only receive the meat from the supplier and freeze the meat for use of tomorrow

Molecular characterization of two hantavirus strains from different rattus species in Singapore

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hantaviruses cause human disease in endemic regions around the world. Outbreaks of hantaviral diseases have been associated with changes in rodent population density and adaptation to human settlements leading to their proliferation in close proximity to human dwellings. In a parallel study initiated to determine the prevalence of pathogens in Singapore's wild rodent population, 1206 rodents were trapped and screened. The findings established a hantavirus seroprevalence of 34%. This paper describes the molecular characterization of hantaviruses from <it>Rattus norvegicus </it>and <it>Rattus tanezumi</it>, the predominant rodents caught in urban Singapore.</p> <p>Methodology</p> <p>Pan-hanta RT-PCR performed on samples of <it>Rattus norvegicus </it>and <it>Rattus tanezumi </it>indicated that 27 (2.24%) of the animals were positive. sequence analysis of the S and M segments established that two different hantavirus strains circulate in the rodent population of Singapore. Notably, the hantavirus strains found in <it>Rattus norvegicus </it>clusters with other Asian Seoul virus sequences, while the virus strains found in <it>Rattus tanezumi </it>had the highest sequence similarity to the Serang virus from <it>Rattus tanezumi </it>in Indonesia, followed by Cambodian hantavirus isolates and the Thailand virus isolated from <it>Bandicota indica</it>.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Sequence analysis of the S and M segments of hantavirus strains found in <it>Rattus norvegicus </it>(Seoul virus strain Singapore) and <it>Rattus tanezumi </it>(Serang virus strain Jurong TJK/06) revealed that two genetically different hantavirus strains were found in rodents of Singapore. Evidently, together with Serang, Cambodian and Thailand virus the Jurong virus forms a distinct phylogroup. Interestingly, these highly similar virus strains have been identified in different rodent hosts. Further studies are underway to analyze the public health significance of finding hantavirus strains in Singapore rodents.</p

Differential expression of a subset of ribosomal protein genes in cell lines derived from human nasopharyngeal epithelium

Extraribosomal functions of human ribosomal proteins (RPs) include the regulation of cellular growth and differentiation, and are inferred from studies that linked congenital disorders and cancer to the deregulated expression of RP genes. We have previously shown the upregulation and downregulation of RP genes in tumors of colorectal and nasopharyngeal carcinomas (NPCs), respectively. Herein, we show that a subset of RP genes for the large ribosomal subunit is differentially expressed among cell lines derived from the human nasopharyngeal epithelium. Three such genes (RPL27, RPL37a and RPL41) were found to be significantly downregulated in all cell lines derived from NPC tissues compared with a nonmalignant nasopharyngeal epithelial cell line. The expression of RPL37a and RPL41 genes in human nasopharyngeal tissues has not been reported previously. Our findings support earlier suspicions on the existence of NPC-associated RP genes, and indicate their importance in human nasopharyngeal organogenesis